What is certificate lifecycle management?

Certificate lifecycle management is a barrier between attackers and your network. If the certificate’s lifecycle expires, this could open up vulnerabilities in your network that cybercriminals could exploit.

To better understand how important certificate lifecycle management is, you need to understand what an SSL certificate is, as well as its lifecycle. Understanding certificates will help you better manage your network’s SSL certificates, which protect against cybercriminals.

Content:

• 1 What is an SSL certificate?
• 2 What is the life cycle of an SSL certificate?
• 3 How to be proactive with your digital security strategy
• 4 Don’t Wait to Improve Your SSL Certificate Manager

What is an SSL certificate?

Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) contain Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates in combination with key pairs. This combination of SSL certificate and key pair authenticates users and encrypts data to keep your network secure. The keys are authenticated by sending and verifying the digital signatures associated with the SSL certificate.

Key pairs installed on the server or in the cloud – one public key and one private key – are tied to an SSL certificate. The public key is intended to verify the certificate information and digital signature of the device that is trying to establish a connection with the server or cloud.

What is the life cycle of an SSL certificate?

An SSL certificate does not exist indefinitely. This finite existence should take place in order to better enhance the security of your network. Validity periods exist to make it harder for cyberattackers to obtain and use the identities of these certificates. SSL certificates can go through some or all of these steps when a device certificate is required:

• Request
• Creation
• Problem
• storage
• Check
• Validity
• Replace
• Extend
• withdraw
• Destroy

Managing SSL certificates requires constant vigilance when checking the validity of certificates. The certificate manager renews or replaces expired certificates to make sure the SSL certificates are always in place. From time to time certificates may be revoked prior to expiration and destroyed to avoid further use.

Cybersecurity experts cannot stress enough that the lifecycle of a certificate should never be interrupted. There must be valid certificates for all devices on the network. If the certificate has expired, interruption can lead to vulnerabilities in your network connections and provoke a cyberattack.

How to be proactive in your digital security strategy

Now, if you have a lot of devices on your network, the more certificates you or your IT department has to manage. For your IT department, managing certificates manually may not be cost effective or efficient. Or you may be a business owner who needs to divert his time to other important aspects of your business.

This is when automating the certificate management life cycle becomes practical. If you have an automated certificate management system, your network is always secure. And instead of relying on spreadsheets or legacy certificate management tools, the automated certificate management system comes with a single functional dashboard where all your certificate information is transferred from all devices on the network to a dashboard for viewing and processing.

Companies like Sectigo can modernize the way you serve your SSL certificate and PKI management systems while keeping your business network secure. It is possible to buy only the required SSL certificates with options that best secure your network.

• Single SSL Certificates
• Wildcard SSL Certificates
• Multi-Domain SSL Certificates
• Domain Validation (DV) SSL Certificates
• Organization Validation (OV) SSL Certificates
• Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates

Don’t Wait to Improve Your SSL Certificate Manager

Cyber ​​attackers check network connections for vulnerabilities that they can exploit without risk or effort. So don’t let your business network fall into the hands of cybercriminals. Instead, upgrade or upgrade your SSL certificate manager today.